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Honda is the latest automaker whose well-intentioned technology could hurt sales. Honda should be on a roll with its 2013, ninth-generation Accord that ships mid-September. The Accord will be the first to market with Aha, the entertainment aggregator. Pandora, Bluetooth, USB, and a rear camera come standard. Accords come with an LCD display standard and many have two in the center stack. It expects to receive a Top Safety Pick Plus rating after acing the new small overlap frontal crash test. Fuel economy is up, the car is quieter, and it holds the same people and more luggage in a shorter vehicle. But there are quirks in the tech, efficiency, and safety features. Enough to give some buyers pause.

Technology is a two-edged sword. BMW discovered that in 2002 with iDrive, the first cockpit controller that replaced too many single-function dashboard buttons with a single controller and too, too many commands to remember. Mercedes-Benz scaled back its tech offerings in 2006 after some didn’t work and others confused buyers. Ford since 2008 has been criticized for the complexity of Ford Sync, MyFord Touch, and most recently the simplified redesign of MyFord Touch — a undesirable kind of threepeat. Cadillac is likely to find Cadillac CUE, the capacitive touchscreen Cadillac User Experience interface, is MyFord Touch by a different name. Now it’s Honda’s turn.

Here are five Honda advances that customers may not see as fondly as Honda does.

1. Honda Lane Watch: unbalanced blind spot detection

Lane Watch is the neatest tech feature on the 2013 Accord: a wide-angle camera in the base of the passenger-side mirror. Flick your right directional before changing lanes and the 8-inch center stack display switches to show an 80-degree area vs. about 20 degrees with a traditional mirror, Honda says. There are even three distance-estimator lines to help gauge the blind spot. (So, technically, Lane Watch should be Blind Watch, which is probably not P.C. enough as a phrase, or Blind Spot Watch. Lane Watch takes the place of automated blind spot detection systems that gauge the distance for you and give you a go/no-go indicator in the outside mirror or window frame, often a steady yellow warning triangle when a car is in your blind spot, that flashes (sometimes accompanied by a steering wheel vibration or warning beep) if you flip the turn signal.

But on the driver side of the new Accord, the entire warning system is almost non-existent: All you get is an outside mirror with a convex strip on the outer edge. It’s better than nothing but it’s hard for some people to judge distances, especially at night when you’re not seeing cars but headlamp glare. On the Accords I drove, the convex mirror edge didn’t seem to expand the field of view very much (pictured above).

2. Lane Departure Warning: annoying beep, hidden indicator

Asian automakers love things that go beep, apparently. If you drift onto a lane marking without your blinker on, Lane Departure Warning (LDW) on the Accord sounds a beep that is annoying (everyone in the car knows you messed up), and flashes a light in the instrument panel that you probably can’t see. It’s in the upper right corner and blocked by the steering wheel unless you move the adjustable wheel way out of position. You can’t disable the beep and just have the flashing light. One device, three strikes. The right way to do it is to gently vibrate the steering wheel, as most European and some American automakers do, or vibrate the seat pan, as the Cadillac XTS and Cadillac ATS do. That even lets you sense if you’re drifting left or right. The best placement for the LDW visual signal is in a multi-information display (the Accord has one and it’s not overused) between the steering wheel and tachometer. (Even better: a head-up display.)

Honda’s ill-conceived LDW system is paired with a forward collision warning system that shares the LDW camera system. It doesn’t brake the car (as on the Acura Collision Mitigation Braking System) but it does warn you, clearly, quickly and forcefully, to slow down and brake right now. Nothing wrong with Honda’s forward collision warning.

3. Standard rear camera but no parking sonar

Honda got out ahead of the 2014 mandate that all cars have a rear camera and cockpit display. That’s good. But it’s not paired with a backup sonar option that may be a better safety tool than the camera. Certainly the two together are the best possible solution. Unless you watch the backup display continuously, you may miss a child or animal that darts behind the car, or you may be watching and not see a currently animate object if there’s sun glare, or if it’s dark and the back-up lamps aren’t very good.

Sonar can do that and the best sonar systems actually project onto the LCD display green-yellow-red waves front and rear showing how close you are to the object, coupled with faster pinging sounds that become a solid tone when you’re just a few inches away.

Honda used to offer sonar as a dealer accessory, which made it more expensive ($513 plus installation on the 2012 Accord), but at least you could get it. Honda doesn’t list is as a 2013 Accord accessory.

4. $2,000 navigation system

When it comes to navigation, Honda is living on Rip Van Winkle time, snoozing through the pricing freefall of the past three years that has competitors offering navigation for as little as, well, free. For GM and Ford, it’s now $795. Nissan Altima, one of three close competitors (Altima, Hyundai Sonata, Toyota Camry), sells it for $590. On the Hyundai Azera, a slightly upmarket competitor, it’s free. If you want navigation on the 2013 Accord, it’s $2,000. Ka-ching. Honda does say the 2013 version is “significantly improved” (with features such as casual voice input), as if car technology can be decoupled from Moore’s law that since 1970 has said performance improves and prices fall continuously. (Ask Garmin and TomTom about Moore’s law.)

5. Plug-in hybrid with reduced EV range

The Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid electric for 2013 upped the range it covers on battery power from 35 to 38 miles. Honda estimates the Accord PHEV will get 10-15 miles when it arrives early next year. The Volt lists for $40,000. The Accord PHEV will probably be around $35,000, though prices haven’t been set. Buyers may wonder why the newest PHEV coming to market, even if it costs less, has worse, not better range than the Volt.

On quirky-tech issues 1-4 above, Honda may be on the wrong side of progress. Here, Honda is probably right from an engineering and cost-benefit status. There are more 10-mile trips than 35-mile trips, so why lug around the weight and cost of twice as many lithium-ion batteries? But Honda’s history with hybrids shows they’re better at engineering than marketing. Since 1999, most Honda hybrids have been partial or weak hybrids (definitely not Honda’s term), meaning the hybrid motor runs only as a booster to the combustion engine. Honda calls it integrated motor assist, or IMA. With Honda hybrids that looked like regular cars (other than the Insight) and propulsion systems that couldn’t carry you a mile or two on battery, Honda ceded to Toyota the bulk of hybrid sales over the past decade.

Give Honda credit for building an interesting PHEV. Toyota also has one now, the Prius Plug-In Hybrid. Maybe there’s strength in numbers.

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